Threat Quality Press

I have a demented fascination with Doritos flavors, primarily because there are so damn many of them and they’re getting more oddly specific every year. This culminated in last year’s ‘mystery’ flavor, which turned out to be Mountain Dew.

Work that out in your head a little bit. Mountain Dew Flavored Doritos. In other words: Food for gamers.

Now, Doritos is targeting that other sure-fire snack-food demographic: Hungry Drunk People.

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Based on further responses from Amazon, I am inclined to believe them when they assert that their deranking of gay and lesbian books was not a policy decision.  More likely, this was an error in their “adult reporting” system that was either accidentally or purposefully (or both) exploited; the situation was compounded with a poor PR response from Amazon, who apparently follow the sacred corporate tradition of letting PR people respond to a situation before they know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Some people seem to be mad about Amazon’s ranking and recommendation system, insisting that it’s stupid for them to be doing that in the first place; I’m not sure I agree.  I don’t mind Amazon’s recommendation system, I’ve even sometimes found it helpful.  Whatever the case, a situation like this could easily be a simple implementation problem and not an principle problem.  In any case, if it was an implementation failure, they’ll either get it sorted out or remove the feature, in which case everyone should be happy.

If it was a hacker, well…I don’t really understand the point of it.  Congratulations, hacker:  you have successfully exploited a system that relies on people not being dickheads.  I am sure you will now get twice as many dates.

God damn it.  Because I just looked at the Kindles sales of my book, and discovered that I’d sold fifty copies last month.  So, it was working, and I was happy about it.

And then Amazon does something like this.  Maybe this was a mistake, or an error on their part (people have theories, whatever), but I’m not going to stop being pissed off about it until I see a press release.

[UPDATE:  Amazon is calling it a "glitch."  Based on the information available, I consider this explanation unsatisfactory.]

Amazon has been quietly removing the sales listings of books with homosexual themes, thus leaving them out of searches, because they are categorized as “adult.”  They are, likewise, not removing books that have explicit heterosexual sex in them, nor are they removing many titles in which you can read about a man getting his head exploded.

If it is a policy, I can kind of understand it:  they want to avoid seeming like they’re in support of some kind of agenda, and are trying to make the “controversial” books kind of hidden–the lunatic anti-book fringe has already conceded a lot of territory in terms of regular vanilla sexiness and good old-fashioned American violence, so those books can stay.  The problem is, doing something like this makes you look like you’re supporting the anti-homosexual agenda–an agenda so thoroughly spiteful it seeks to eradicate even the thought of homosexuality from human consciousness.

The way that you avoid having an agenda is like this:  “We sell books.  Here are some books.”  It was very easy, and Amazon.com has apparently fucked it up.

Anyway, I think it remains peculiar that here in America we consider it more damaging to the precious, fragile innocence of our precious, fragile little babies to know that homosexuality exists because they read Stephen Fry’s memoir, than it is to read Laurel Hamilton’s insane Merry Gentry books, where some woman gets fucked six ways from Sunday, and also a man gets turned inside out and chopped up with a sword.

Whatever, so, here’s a petition you can sign in protest.  In the meantime, I’m suspending Kindle sales of The Translated Man.  This is more a symbolic gesture than it is anything else, but it’s something, at least.

As all of you know, today is Easter, a day in which Christians celebrate the terrible majesty of their Undead God.

In thirty-three AD, a criminal madman was sentenced to death by the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate.  Three days after the execution, the man returned from Hell leading an army of the damned, and changing the face of civilization as we know it.  As is custom, every year Christians gather to appease the monstrous undead legions with fresh rabbit carcasses, attempting to sate their terrible hunger in the hopes that they will be spared and live to see the glorious End of Days, when ALL the dead shall rise up and devour the living, and also there will be locusts and plagues and stuff.

Though I am not an adherent to this faith, I feel that it is important to look past sectarian differences and recognize brothers and sisters in terror.

Iä!  Iä!  Iesu Ftahn!

With regards to my last post, it has come to my attention that Time–and certain others–have done entirely too much talking about certain characters.

Therefore!

Let the name of Phyllis Schlafly be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of of the World. Let the name of Phyllis Schlafly be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time.

So let it be written.  So let it be done.

SO SPEAKS BRAAK!

You have to go to law school to be a lawyer, and _______ _______ sure must have done that.  It turns out that going to law school doesn’t actually make you implicitly capable of constructing intelligent or valid arguments.

Time just did a Q&A with _______ ________, hater of gays, despiser of equality, and foe of a free society.  I have taken the liberty of annotating it for you.

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But this is important:

Vermont is the first state to legistlate equality of marriage.

Now.  Go read more about New Orleans.